Those Führer-Like PAD Diatribes
This is a bitter post. Listening to PAD leaders on Government House stage any outsider must be struck by their screeching diatribes. Forgive me the comparison, but last time I came across this type of inflammatory voices was while listening to recordings of, well, the Führer. Talk about instigation, demonization, mass psychosis.
It is no coincidence that a Bangkok Post editorial on day 3 of the PAD’s occupation of Government House reads: “To PAD watchers like Professor Prabhas Pintoptang of Chulalongkorn’s faculty of political science, the coalition has been seen as planting structural hatred and division in society on a scale far worse than that ever achieved by the previous government under ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra.”
The Post goes on that in an interview with Thai Post last month, Prof. Prabhas said the PAD had become “an ultra-nationalist movement.” He said the PAD was using the same demonization tactics employed by the right-wing militia to crush the pro-democracy student movement in the mid-1970s, which ended in the lynching of student activists near Thammasat University on Oct 6, 1976.
Many honest, noble, broadminded followers are drawn into something, into a pseudo-religious, para-nationalistic movement – no longer fully aware of the real extent of their disciple-like devotion. Used as cannon fodder in a way. Take another academic‘s warning that “only Chamlong Srimuang and Sondhi Limthongkul have the ability to control mobs. When they [the protesters] don’t have leaders, they won’t have leadership, and they’ll become lost.”
What? Come again? Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim? Just got elected and may bring the opposition to power after years of humiliations and jail?
I’m not saying. I’m just saying.
Et voilà – Charlie Chaplin, the Great Dictator. You’ll be surprised how familiar this all sounds. As he said back then: “In the name of democracy.”
Siamese Fasci: An Italian executive working in Thailand once compared the Thai national character to that of the Italians. A fun/food/sex loving people whose need to succumb to the dictatorial iron fist and reverence to the man in uniform reveals a schizophrenic chasm.
Even Mussolini-style architecture on Ratchadomnuen Klang Avenue suggests a certain dementia praecox in view of the prevailing SE Asian architectural influences.
The analogy stops there, unlike the G8 at Genova, Thai students have today been barbarically barbituarized by the local media and consumer barons. We know who they are and of their provenance.
Your topic is weird Dan – but somehow it all adds up I must say.
Strange logic – but it’s making sense!
Glorious. All that’s left is to pray for our nation.
Those peoples power.
There is no violence because the real authorities are in cahoots with the mob. It’s all a sharade; Samak is a losing puppet against the elite who desperately want power back before any real semblance of democracy could take foot in this land – that’s it!
How to get rid of PAD:
“Research suggests that the best way of swatting a fly is to creep up slowly and aim ahead of its location” – see this BBC article.
[...] And another thing crossed my mind: PAD core leader Sondhi’s “final solution.” Heard that before? It’s the exact English translation of Hitler’s Endlösung. In case you’ve missed it, here’s our Those Führer-like PAD diatribes. [...]
[...] someone, out of the blue, calls you a “fascist” though – oops, the same thing I called the PAD -, a fascist with no respect for “little brown people,” you may think [...]